There’s a meme I enjoy. It involves someone recording google translate. They translate a word to French, sometimes a pop culture character’s name, then listen to it using the google generated French accent. This is usually followed by a poorly photoshopped photo of the character with beret and baguette. The photo is also accompanied with stereotypical French music. Here are some examples.
This meme makes me chuckle.
They also involve other languages which I think is fun.
Recording the French google translate voice became so popular, it eventually spawned a new meme making fun of the language.
There’s a viral video of someone finding French homophones and putting them in a sentence to show that the language is ridiculous. Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled and defined differently.
English: “A green worm pours a glass towards a glassmaker around eight o’clock.”
French: “Un ver vert verse un verre vers un verrier vers huit heures.”
English: “But granny even liked my dishes.”
French: “Mais mamie a même aimé mes plats.”
English: “Your uncle mows your tuna.”
French: “Ton tonton tond ton thon.”
Here’s some more examples.
The French eventually responded making fun of the English language which I think is long overdue.
French: “Minerai ou rame?”
English: “Ore or oar?”
Here’s the video response.
Well done. Slow clap for the French.
But I also think the English language is a lot more ridiculous. We deserve to be made fun of more.
Have you heard of the buffalo sentence?
The first buffalo sentence was written in 1967 in Dmitri Borgmann’s book Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought. Dmitri Borgmann was a German-American author known for his practice in linguistics. This is the buffalo sentence:
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
Unlike the French translations above, the buffalo sentence is grammatically and logically correct. It uses homonyms, words that are spelled and pronounced the same but have different definitions.
There are three definitions of the word buffalo:
- n. Bison.
- n. Buffalo, New York.
- v. To outwit, confuse, deceive, intimidate, or baffle.
The sentence uses a restrictive clause meaning the relative clause does not need a comma. It also uses a reduced relative clause omitting the word that. All of this is grammatically correct.
If the relative clause weren’t reduced or restricted, and if we replace the words with their alternate definitions, the sentence would read as such:
“Bison from Buffalo, that other bison from Buffalo bully, also bully bison from Buffalo.”
English is kind of stupid sometimes.
If you want to have some fun with heteronyms, words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations and meanings, read a poem called “The Chaos” by Dutch writer Gerard Nolst Trenité.
The title is appropriate.
English is absolute chaos.